


Broken Trust

by ladyflowdi



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Bed-Wetting, Childhood Trauma, Chronic Illness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Major Illness, Medical Conditions, Medical Examination, Medical Procedures, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Child, References to Depression, Seizures, Sick Character, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29414916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: Time is an adult’s construct, so it may be the beginning of autumn, or October, or maybe December, when David gets sick.
Relationships: Alexis Rose & David Rose, David Rose & Johnny Rose, David Rose & Moira Rose
Comments: 66
Kudos: 109





	Broken Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, this is the heaviest thing I've written in a very long time, but it came to me and wouldn't shake loose until I wrote it. Mind the tags/triggers, friends, and take care of yourselves. If any of the tags are a trigger for you, you may want to pass on this one.

Time is an adult’s construct, so it may be the beginning of autumn, or October, or maybe December, when David gets sick. David is seven-and-a-half and that’s a big deal, Adelina told him so, because being eight means that he’ll be old enough to do the fun things that his parents have always said he was too little for, like stay up late when Mom invites her glamorous TV friends over for soirees, and go visit Dad in his big CEO office overlooking The City. Alexis is too little because she’s only four, but David is going to be _eight_ and that means that maybe Mom and Dad will let him be around them more. 

He wants to be around them, more than anything else in the world, because sometimes he misses Mom and Dad so much it makes his heart squeeze until it overflows all over his chest and up to his eyes. It doesn’t mean he’s a baby, even though Ian S. from his old school called him a baby all the time; it’s just that David can’t control the squeezy-heart feeling sometimes. He wishes he could, because he doesn’t think Dad likes it so much when David cries, so he’s trying to be more like a big boy and not a baby but it’s hard, it’s so hard.

It’s cold outside, and has been for weeks and weeks, but not so cold that Adelina couldn’t walk him to school. David _loves_ his new school, the Ramaz School – it sounds so fancy, and David feels fancy going there, even though it’s not really fancy at all. It’s a Jewish school because David is half-Jewish and Dad had wanted him to start learning about his heritage, and David had liked that because maybe it would make him feel more sure of himself. Maybe he could understand why he was different a little better.

The Ramaz School is amazing. David gets to make art and play the harpsichord, and his teacher, Mrs. Eidelman, is so nice and laughs all the time, like the world is a beautiful place that can be laughed about. The _best part_ of being a student at Ramaz is that every Wednesday he goes to Hebrew School with Maggie, his best friend in the entire world, because she doesn’t tease David and she’s patient and kind and makes him laugh. She shares her pudding and she teases him but it’s not mean teasing, it's teasing like friends do. Maggie is his friend, his best friend, and David loves her and the Ramaz so much.

David’s most favorite days of the week are A-Days, which are Mondays and Thursdays, because he gets to go to the library, where Mr. Chin had painted a big mural of a castle and a green dragon on the wall, and had put stickers on the books so that David could find the ones about dinosaurs real easy. He’d told Adelina all about the library but he doesn’t think she understands how amazing it is, how many books there are. He gets to take home _ten at a time_ if he wants. He never does because it would be selfish, but he likes the idea that he could if he wanted to.

It’s cold outside all the time now but David has warm boots and warm scarves and big puffy coats, and he loves his new school and he’s so happy, so he doesn’t realize he doesn’t feel well for a little while. It sneaks up on him, his not-feeling-goodness. His tummy hurts and his head aches, but David sometimes used to say that his tummy hurt and his head ached when he didn’t want to go to his old school, where Ian S. used to be mean to him, so Adelina doesn’t believe him. It’s a bad feeling because his tummy hurts like he’s going to have poops, but none come out, and his head hurts behind his ears, and it makes his eyes feel funny. It hurts in his body, but also in his heart a little. Not being believed is a bad feeling.

Adelina gives him medicine for headaches but not for tummies, because she says he has, “A little fever, very small,” and Mom sighs and says that he has a _delicate constitution_ and David doesn’t like the way she says it, like it’s a bad thing, but maybe it _is._ David thinks it must be, because he wakes up in the middle of nighttime and he can’t move.

David used to be scared of the dark. He isn’t so scared anymore, but Adelina still leaves his nightlight on, and it glows really soft like the moon from his bedside. Every part of his body hurts, even his hair he thinks, because the blankets rub the tickly hairs on his arms the wrong way and that hurt hurt _hurts_. Even crying hurts, but he can’t help it. His voice and his throat are so sore, but the hurting feeling behind his ears is all over his neck now and hurts worse than anything he ever felt before.

He sobs, “ _Mom_ ,” and that is so silly, David knows how far away The Children’s Wing is. Dad had been mad about it, but Mom had said they needed space. David doesn’t know why, because he is very careful about cleaning up his toys and his room, and he doesn’t need so much space.

Mom is on the other side of the house and she won’t hear, but his brain won’t listen so good. He calls and calls and calls for her, hours it seems, because Adelina doesn’t start working until the morning time, and he wishes so much that she was here, because Adelina loves him. When he was little he used to throw temper tantrums and the staff started ignoring him, and that used to make him so angry, but Adelina never ignored him. She used to sleep next to Alexis’s nursery before Alexis learned to use the toilet, because Alexis wore diapers because she was a baby, and Adelina would clean her and give her bottles and take care of her. Adelina would take care of David too, even though she was here for Alexis. But then Alexis got to be a big girl and Adelina didn’t sleep here anymore. She’s at home where she lives with her husband, Mr. Diego, and she can’t hear him calling from so far away.

It’s so hot, it’s so hot so hot _so hot_ , and David is sick a little on his duvet, and then he’s sick a lot, because his head moves when he throws up and his neck, _his neck,_ it hurts _so much_. The sick is so gross and smells so bad, it’s the yuckiest thing David has ever done, but much worse is when it goes cold and then he’s cold too, because he was sick everywhere and now his cozy bed is clammy and wet.

He just wants Mom to come. He wishes for her so much it hurts inside of him too, inside his chest and inside his heart. If she came right now he thinks she would tweak his ear like she did sometimes when he was standing next to her at her vanity, watching her put on her lipstick so carefully, her hand steady and slow, the jewels at her ears and around her throat twinkling in the bright white lights. He wished he could put on makeup just like that, and he’d been practicing with his markers, but he could never make the lines so neat. She would tweak his ear because he was too close to her and standing in her light, but it was funny too because she would smile like it was something just for the two of them.

He thinks maybe he hears her, the soft lilt of her voice, but it’s just the shadows moving in his room, the trees brushing against the windows in the night breeze.

Maybe - maybe when he was throwing up Mom came in, and she ran back out to look for medicine for him. David knows that’s how it works, mommies are supposed to take care of their little ones, like Mrs. Frisby in David’s favorite book, _Mrs. Frisby and The Rats of Nimh_. Mrs. Frisby’s little boy, Timothy, had pneumonia and would die if they moved him out of the spring plowing field and to their summer home, so Mrs. Frisby had to find medicine for him, and he wonders if that’s where Mom is, if she’s looking for medicine for him like Mrs. Frisby did for her little boy.

He lays there in the dark, for a very long time. His body stops hurting so much, except his neck, his neck hurts more than _anything_ , more than the time he broke his wrist when he fell off his pony, Brenny, and that had hurt so much he’d cried for days and days. It hurts so much that it’s all he can think about, and somehow he can smell the ocean, and it’s so strange because Adelina said the ocean is in The City where Dad works, so he shouldn’t be able to smell it. He can almost see it too, can almost hear it, like the sound the waves make when they crash on the shore. The water tickles his toes and it’s cold and clean and pure, like the water is trying to soothe the pain, and he can see fish swimming in it, nice fish, cute fish, and even sharks but the sharks are friendly and wave at him. Sometimes there are seaweeds, which are gross, but not all the time and David wades in because he has floaties and the water can’t hurt him.

The water makes him cold, and even though he’s never been to the ocean with Alexis he knows what she’d look like, beaming at him with all her golden curls fluffed up and in a pink bathing suit, because Alexis loves pink, like Barbie. She’d be cold too, because the water is cold on your skin if the sun isn’t hot outside, and he just wants to get them both warm but he can’t find his beach towel. Alexis will get sick too if he doesn’t get them warm, and it's hard getting up, the hardest thing he’s ever done, but he loves his baby sister so much because he isn’t so alone anymore. He’s a big brother now, and has to take care of her. If she were sick David would come. He wishes he had a big brother or sister so they could take care of him too.

There are seaweeds grabbing at his legs and chest, but they’re gentle seaweeds, and he pushes and pushes at them until they’re moved, and he rolls away from them, but then his feet slip on them and he hears a _crash_ and the floor punches him, the hardest he ever felt before, and the air gets pressed out of his lungs and his whole body is jerking like Eduardo did when he got electrocuted in the kitchen, and Dad thought he hadn’t seen but David _had_ , even though Adelina came to get him right away. He jerks and jerks and he can’t stop, and then he smells the ocean again.

A long time goes by, and David can’t breathe so good, he has little bits of throw up in his mouth and he can’t move so much to get them out, he wants to cough but every time he tries his whole body moves and it hurts so much. He gets cold, so cold, cold like he never felt before in his whole life, except his head. In the wintertime, when he gets too close to the fireplace in the Great Room, his skin gets really tight and hot because the fire is so big and crackling and roaring that the heat overwhelms him. His head feels like that, like there’s no part that isn’t hot, but the rest of him is so cold except between his legs where the ocean is suddenly hot, puddling under him. The hot water makes him sleepy, and he closes his eyes.

He hears someone cry out, then voices in Spanish, and Adelina, he can hear her, she’s whispering _dios mío de mi alma,_ and then Dad is here, Dad never goes with them on vacations but he’s here in the sand with them, and his voice is very deep and very soft, and _Mom is here too,_ he can hear her screaming, she’s _so loud_ and David can’t move but it’s alright, Dad is here. Dad picks him up with his big hands and it hurts worse than anything even though he’s being gentle, but David is broken and sometimes broken pieces rubbed together the wrong way even when you tried to be gentle. 

_It’s alright son,_ he’s saying, over and over, and then he’s pressing David against his chest right there, against his heart, and David can hear it roaring _so loud_ , like when David has been running outside at recess and his heart races _bara-bara-bara_ so fast. The world swings and the room spins as Dad stands up, and David throws up again, and he gets it all over Dad and Mom won’t stop screaming, and he can hear Alexis crying, and he closes his eyes.

When he wakes up, he’s in a cold room on top of a hard-plastic bed, and a lady with a blue shirt is holding his hand. “It’s alright honey,” she’s saying, and she’s wearing a doctor mask over her face, and he wishes he could see her mouth even though her blue eyes are very soft and gentle. “My name is Heather. We’re trying to find out why you’re sick. Dr. Malcom is right behind you. We have to do a checkup on your back, and it’s going to hurt just a little bit, so you have to keep still, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers.

“You’re a brave boy,” Dad says, because he’s there, and David doesn’t know how he even missed him, but maybe because Dad is wearing a blue shirt and a doctor mask too.

David tries to be brave because he knows Dad doesn’t like it when he cries, but then the doctor is doing something _inside him_ and David realizes that the doctor is making surgery on his back and _it’s the worst pain David thinks he will ever feel_. He screams and it doesn’t sound so loud at all, but the blue shirted lady is speaking to him and he tries to scream again, to tell them how much it's hurting, but his voice is gone. He sobs until he can’t breathe because David isn’t brave, _he isn’t brave_ and it hurts so much he thinks maybe he’s going to die. He’s so scared and he wants his mom, _he wants her so bad._

“It’s okay son, shh, it’s alright,” Dad is whispering, his big brown eyes so dark and pinchy like when he’s worried about Rose Video, and David doesn’t know why he should be worried about Rose Video right now, but Mom said Dad was a work-haulick so maybe that’s why. He strokes David’s sweaty hair back, his other hand so strong on David’s hip, keeping him still. “It’s alright sweetheart, Mom is right outside, she’s talking to the doctors and then you’ll see her, okay?”

“Please,” David sobs, and the doctor says something and the nurse holds his leg still too, and the pain in his neck is so bad he wants to chop it off because that would feel better than this. “Please Daddy, she’s supposed to get me medicine, like Mrs. Frisby.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Dad says, but the nurse is smiling at him with her crinkly eyes over the mask, and he doesn’t know how she could be smiling, not when the surgery hurts so much, but she says, “You’re right, David – your mom’s gone to get you medicine just like Mrs. Frisby did for her little boy. And soon we’ll get you out of the plowing field too, and to a room nice and comfortable.”

“It hurts,” he wails, and then there are other nurses, so many others, but the nice nurse fits something on his face, a mask of something, and she murmurs and then Daddy says, “Shhh, it’s alright son, close your eyes and go to sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up, okay?”

He doesn’t know how he could sleep, not when he hurts so much, but the mask makes him so sleepy. He drifts away, and he doesn’t dream about the ocean, or Alexis. He dreams nothing at all.

When he wakes up he is in a hospital room, David knows that because it looks like the one on _Sunrise Bay_ , when Mom brought him to the set to show him where she worked. He’s by himself, except for the big machines around him, beeping and loud and hissing _._

It seems like a very long time has passed, but he’s so tired, and he sleeps a lot. There are sticks inside of him, one inside of his neck and one inside of his hand, and its pinchy and hurts, and when he moved his hand the first time blood came out and the nurses had to come and change his blankets so David keeps his arm still and his body still because he’s afraid blood will come out of his neck too.

Adelina is there sometimes when he wakes up, and Dad. Mostly David is alone, though, and being alone in the hospital is the scariest thing that ever happened to him, even more scarier than going to a new school. He’s ashamed of how much he cried when he was having his surgery, because he wasn’t brave at all, and he thinks Dad must be so embarrassed because David made a scene in front of the nurses, and Dad hates it when David makes scenes. He doesn’t know why Mom isn’t here, though. He wishes for her so much that he cries himself to sleep, and when he wakes up he can almost smell her perfume. 

He doesn’t ask, _doesn’t ask_ , until one night when Dad comes to see him after his working time because the hospital is close to his office in The City.

“Oh son,” Dad says softly, setting his briefcase down and coming to stand near the bed. He brushes his hand over David’s head, softly and just once, and kisses his forehead. “You know that your mother doesn’t deal well with these kinds of things. It doesn’t mean she isn’t worried about you. She was just telling me today that she wishes you could be helping her pick out her gown for the Daytime Emmys. She needs your eye for color.”

The world shifts one step to the right. He stares at his father, and the hurt inside of him isn’t from his sickness.

 _There’s a waiting list darling_ , David remembers her saying, as he watched her curl Roberta’s long blonde hair the night he got sick. She’s buying her gown, and she won’t want to be near David, because David was sick and threw up on himself, and she won’t want to get throw up on her new couture gown.

Moms with sick children were supposed to take them to the doctor and promise everything will be okay, even when they cried from it hurting so bad. Moms who loved their children were supposed to hug them, and kiss them, and hold them, and check on them at nighttime.

For the first time in his life, David realizes that maybe the reason his mom doesn’t do those things is because she doesn’t love him.

He’s supposed to be brave, but his chest is cracking open and he can’t breathe so good and then the big machines around him start to make noise and the nurses make Dad leave. That’s good, because David doesn’t want his father to see him cry, not again. Not ever again.

David doesn’t go back to his new school, because he has something called _menginey-tis_ and it’s contagious to other children, but also because the menginey-tis made David’s brain sick and Ms. Heather said that brains take longer to heal. Sometimes he smells the ocean and has to take special medicine so he doesn’t have the jerks again, which Dad calls _seizures_. Sometimes David throws up on himself when he has the jerks, and one time Alexis saw him and screamed and screamed and it made the ocean smell so much worse.

The worst part, _the worst part,_ is that Maggie isn’t allowed to be his friend anymore, which she tells him tearfully on the phone. David can’t even go to Hebrew School, or to the library to check out dinosaur books. Mrs. Eidelman sends him packets of homework for a little while, but soon she forgets about him, because he was the new kid at the Ramaz and she has a classroom of other children to take care of. Alexis isn’t allowed to play with him, in case she gets the menginey-tis too, and David realizes that the sun comes up and the sun goes down lots and lots and lots of times, and the only person he sees is Adelina.

It starts to get hard, real hard, to get out of his bed in the morning time. David didn’t know that sadness could make you so sleepy. Adelina tries to make him get up, and he throws temper tantrums because that used to make her leave sometimes, and it still works. She starts sending Raquel to give him his medicine, maybe because she knows David hates Raquel or maybe because she wants to punish him for being a baby.

The loneliness crushes him up like dust. His days twist and tumble together, and all David can think about is how much he hurts, all over, on his outside and on his inside. He thinks about what he could do to make it stop. Dad gets so mad when David asks him. He has the pinchy eyes every time he comes to see him in his room, and he yells, and when he leaves he’s just as angry as when he came in. David wishes Dad would stay with him, cuddle him, but even if he’d had the words he doesn’t think he could say them. Dads cuddle their sons when they love them. Sons never have to ask. David isn’t a good son, so maybe that’s why.

“It escapes me at times, how much you take after me,” a voice says, from the door to his room.

David doesn’t look up from his journal, but his heart begins to race anyway.

It’s late into the evening, almost nighttime, and the sun has been painting longer and longer shadows on his floor. The tree right outside his window has a family of sparrows living in it, and they’re singing to each other. He hasn’t seen his mother in a very long time, since it was winter.

He hears her heels click-click-clicking on the hardwood floor, and the whisper sound of her skirt against her nylons. Her perfume, _Giorgio_ , smells like flowers. David had dabbed it behind his own ears more than once, wishing he could be just as beautiful and glamorous. She’s wearing a new gown, something he’s never seen before, long and black and silky, and she’s chosen Claire as her wig tonight, long and such a soft, beautiful red.

She sits on the end of his bed, though David can’t help but notice that she lays down one of his blankets first. It makes him hurt inside, that Mom thinks his bed is dirty, that maybe he’d peed in it again.

He had. Two days ago, and last night. It was hard getting up when he was hurting so much. Adelina was mad at him for that too, because she had to keep washing his bedding.

“Your father is worried for you. The doctors have said you’re well on your way to recovery, but David, you must set this despondency aside and put this unfortunate season of your life behind you.”

He scrapes his wrist over his eyes but doesn’t look up from his journal, even if what he’s writing is gibberish.

Mom sighs behind him, the way she does when she thinks he’s being difficult. David is always being difficult. “I was very worried for you, David. We all were. But now you really must _stop_ with these histrionics. You’re on the mend, and before long you’ll have a new school, and new friends. Life will be a grand stage play once more, it’s just this hard bit you must get through first.”

The silence of his room is overwhelming. The sun is setting, and Mom and Dad will be whisked away in their limousine somewhere, and Eduardo will make him dinner and Raquel will put him to bed and David will be alone again, in this cold room in this cold house.

He can’t do it. He can’t do it can’t do it _can’t do it._

He stares hard at the lines of his journal, at his jerky writing when Mom came into his room. How the letters he put down on paper when she started speaking don’t make sense. “I hurt.”

Mom sucks in a startled breath and half-stands, backing away as if he’s going to vomit on her beautiful dress. “Your father has your pills.”

Terror grips his throat with two sweaty hands. “Please don’t leave Mommy,” he begs, turning to face her. It’s awful because she’s so pretty, she looks like a princess from a storybook and David is wearing his pajamas and smells like sickness. He’s so selfish, he must be, because Mom is dressed to go out and he still can’t keep the words inside. “Please stay with me here.”

She stares at him from across the room. “Your father and I have a dinner reservation with Arnie and Maria.”

His throat floods with tears. It’s no less than he was expecting – Mom doesn’t get dressed up just for fun.

His mother doesn’t love him. He doesn’t matter to her, he doesn’t matter, _he doesn’t matter to anyone._

He turns back to his desk, and stares at his journal. It’s so quiet, and she shifts her weight and her skirt rustles. Her heels click again, closer, closer, and big, fat tears are smearing the ink in his journal, but he wipes them with the edge of his sleeve, so she won’t see.

“What are you writing?” she asks, so close he can smell her perfume.

“I’m making a list.”

“A list?” She doesn’t sit on his bed again. She kneels next to him, in her beautiful gown, and the jewels in her bracelet twinkle under his desk lamp. “What manner of list?”

“Whoever is going to get my things,” David says, and carefully writes _lego colexin._ “For when my brain gets sick again and I die.”

Mom goes still _._ “Is this something you think about?”

He nods jerkily, and writes, _Alexis, wen she gits oldor._ “I don’t want anyone to be wondering about my things. I put them in the closet already, but Adelina said some of my menginey-tis could be in my toys, so you’ll have to make sure they get cleaned before Alexis plays with them.”

“Meningitis,” Mom says, softly.

“What?”

“The disease you’ve contracted,” she says, and he doesn’t think he’d ever heard Mom sound so scared. He looks at her, finally, and her eyes are very wide and glassy, like sometimes after she takes some of her medicine pills. She stares at him, and he stares back.

“I was very worried for you,” she whispers.

His mom is beautiful, and so glamorous, and smart and sophisticated and perfect. David is none of those things. David lies and throws temper tantrums. David steals lipsticks from Mom’s vanity, even though he knows how hard they are to replace. David is a cry baby.

“I think maybe you don’t love me.”

Mom is an actress, and he’s seen her act sad before on _Sunrise Bay_. She doesn’t look sad though, not right now. She looks so much worse than that.

“Of – of course I love you,” she says, and lays her hand gently on his arm. Her diamonds gleam so brightly. Her nails are painted a dark red. “Why would you say that, David?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s never made his mom sad before, not like this, and he feels so guilty. Maybe she doesn’t know she doesn’t love him. Maybe she’d tricked her brain, like he had. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“Moira?” and there’s Dad at the door to his bedroom, in his black bowtie and his shining shoes, and he looks like a movie star, his black hair swept up like James Bond. “Hi son,” Dad says, and smiles as he comes into the room, like he’s happy. Usually when he comes to David’s room he’s so mad, but maybe because Mom is here he’s happy. “I was wondering where you’d gotten off to, Moira. The limo is here.”

Mom is studying David’s face though like she hadn’t heard Dad at all, and he’s been so lonely but now he wishes she’d leave his room. He doesn’t want her here anymore. “I would stay, darling,” Mom says, ducking down to catch his eye, “but Arnie will be back in Los Angeles next week for reshoots, and we won’t get to see him or Maria again until late next year.”

Dad is so quiet and David thinks he’s mad at him again, for being so selfish, for asking Mom to stay when they’re so dressed up to see Arnie and Maria. They’re going to go to a beautiful restaurant, the kind with lots of different forks and spoons for different things, and maybe have the grown up drinks that come in little glasses, and Arnie will smoke a cigar. They’ll laugh and Arnie will tell stories about training for the _Mr. Universe_ competition, and Dad will talk about Zaide Saul and the general store he’d owned in Brooklyn, and Mom and Maria will gush about this year’s Milan lineup. Maybe Mom will tell Arnie and Maria about his sickness, but he doesn’t think so. Mom and Dad don’t love him anymore, and they don’t care that he’s sick. They don’t care how much he’s hurting. They don’t care that he’s lonely.

“I hope you have fun,” he says softly, because that’s what Mrs. Eidelman always used to say on Fridays before the weekend.

Mom reaches out to touch his hair, then stops and pulls her hand back. That’s probably a good idea, because she’s so pretty and clean, and David isn’t. “Try to get some rest, and remember what I told you,” Mom says, and stands, straightening out her skirt even though it got a little bit wrinkled, David can see it, right at the middle where she was kneeling. “Adelina is right down the hall. Call her if you need her.”

David stares down at his journal. “Okay.”

“Good night, son,” Dad says, and comes to drop a kiss on his head, like he does sometimes.

Dad closes David’s door behind them, but David can still hear the tap of Mom’s high heels. Their house is very big, and it echoes a lot, and those are her Louboutin heels, the really tall ones. He can hear her walking downstairs, in the foyer, to the coat room and back, _clickclickclick_ on the tile.

David has a day seat at his window, and it’s from there that he watches the sleek black limousine pull up to the front of their house. Maria comes out, laughing, and kisses Mom on each cheek. Mom’s dress blows in the breeze and the black silk looks like water, flowing down from the white fur around her shoulders. Dad and Arnie shake their hands together like grownups do, and Mom and Maria are arm in arm as they get into the back. Soon enough all he sees are the red brake lights as the limousine stops at the end of their driveway, waiting for the gait to open.

David sits at the window for a very long time, long after he’s supposed to be in bed. The sun finishes setting, and a thousand stars light up the night sky, twinkling so prettily. He sets his head on the window frame and lets himself imagine it, for one second – the limousine coming back up the driveway, Mom stepping out. Her dress would flow back behind her as she came racing to the front door. Lisette would open it for her, _did you forget something, Mrs. Rose?,_ but Mom would come up the steps, her high heels clicking. She’d open the door to his bedroom, and she’d smell like outside, like nighttime and _Giorgio_ and that special mom smell. She’d come to him, and kneel down again, only this time she wouldn’t care that he’d ruin her dress – she’d gather him up and hug him so tightly, and kiss his forehead, and say _I’ll stay here with you darling_.

The sadness inside of him feels like the worst hurting, like when the doctor was making surgery on his back, only the hurting is inside his chest. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but David is by himself and it’s okay if he cries. Nobody is here to see him.

Later, much later, in the nighttime, he wakes up to the sound of his door opening. Sometimes Alexis snuck out of bed and peaked through his door, even though Adelina said she couldn’t. Alexis had nightmares, and before David’s brain got sick, she would come in and cuddle with him. She can’t now – if she gets sick because of David he’d never ever forgive himself, not _ever_.

“Go back to bed Lexie,” he mumbles.

“Oh, no – we’re not doing ‘Lexie’,” Mom says, and pulls the blankets back just enough so that she can get under the covers with him.

David starts to cry before she’s even pulled the quilts back up over them, and he’s sobbing when Mom wraps her arms around him and hugs him so tightly his bones ache. 

She tucks him under her chin and she smells like _Giorgio_ and outside and nighttime and the cotton of her pajamas, and he shakes and shakes and shakes, and Mom holds him like she’s never, ever going to let him go.


End file.
